Olesker's doo-wop portrait of Baltimore is nostalgic, but it has a hard edge.

A highly readable local history lesson on the good, the bad, and the ugly of life here in the extremely edgy city of Baltimore, Maryland. Michael Olesker digs deep and his scathing, alarming, and sometimes hilarious reporting of our past asks the question-have we come a long way in fifty years or are our race and class issues still scarily the same? -- John Waters As someone who lived those very years, growing up in Baltimore, Michael Olesker brought back so many precise memories-with that enameled wisdom of a fine reporter that made me understand better what I had only fondly remembered. He got that old town of mine pitch perfect. -- Frank Deford, commentator on NPR's Morning Edition Through crisp writing and a careful synthesis of facts and events, Olesker makes a case that transformative changes in the American landscape were already taking place-and many of them had their origins amid the seeming innocence of Baltimore in the 1950s. From early rock 'n' roll to block-busting and urban flight, from the death of school prayer to the embrace of American youth culture, he chronicles a city at the brink. Front Stoops in the Fifties is a crisp, insightful dispatch from a skilled writer who knows his city and its history. -- David Simon, executive producer of HBO's The Wire and Treme